Life and Death
by freakanature06
Summary: Judai faces the fate of living forever while losing those he loves most. WARNING: lots of character death!


**Opening**

It took longer than he would have liked for Judai to figure out that he was inexplicably not aging like everyone else around him. He supposed, later, that it made sense that having fused his soul with both Yubel's and Haou's, and inheriting their innate powers, he took on their tendency towards longevity as well. It would have been nice to know early on.

Then he could have at least prepared himself for the inevitable.

**Ryou Marufuji**

Ever since he had graduated from Duel Academy, Judai had been travelling the world, seeing the sights, and living his life in order to help others where he could. It was a good life, and he enjoyed himself immensely. Every day, he learned something new about himself and the world in general. After the first dozen years or so, he started to lose a little bit of his steam, though. He kept trucking on, but he spent much more time visiting his friends all over the world rather than just going wherever the wind took him.

It was sheer coincidence that brought him to visiting Shou just before tragedy struck though.

"Aniki!" The blue-haired man had greeted Judai enthusiastically, but with tears standing out in his eyes. The tears didn't really surprise Judai. Shou had always been very emotional, and while he had matured and learned to control those emotions most of the time, he still lost his restraint a little whenever Judai was around.

No, what alerted Judai that something was wrong was how Shou's face kept twisting in an effort to not burst into tears. Judai frowned and began prodding Shou for information.

It didn't take long for the truth to come out.

"My brother's dying," Shou finally admitted, a couple of the tears he'd been fighting back finally forcing their way past his defenses.

Judai let out a breath and then promptly smiled as widely as he could. For Shou's sake. "Well, why don't we go see him, huh? At the very least, we can make his last few days the best ever!" This proclamation seemed to cheer Shou up marginally. Actually, the best part about it for Shou was the Judai was taking it in stride – handling the situation where he himself could not.

At least, that's what Shou thought. Judai himself was having an internal struggle. He'd dealt with tragedy before, sure. And he had watched all of his friends disappear in front of his eyes, thinking that they were dead, that he would never see them again. But this was different.

There was no foe to be defeated here. There was no way to stop Death from coming now. All he could do was just sit and watch and wait.

This was the real deal.

His father had died a few years previously. He'd worked himself too hard, died young. That hadn't really hurt Judai too much though. He'd never been close to his parents. He'd never really cared about what happened to them, nor did they seem to care about what happened to him either. It had still been hard being at his funeral, certainly, but Judai had come away from the event completely unscathed.

This was the first time he was losing someone he cared about for real. It was already harder than he had hoped it would be. All the same, he had to stay strong. For Shou.

Judai's prediction of the Kaiser living a few more days turned out to be way off. The older man was asleep when Judai and Shou saw him, and he passed during the night. His heart just… stopped. He had pushed himself too hard in his youth and his heart couldn't continue working for much longer after the strain he had already caused it. When they found him in the morning, Shou cried and tried to wake his brother up. Judai had to pull him away, tears running down his own cheeks as he stared at Ryou's inert form.

It was terrifying just how easily he had gone.

Helping Shou to arrange the funeral was one of the hardest things Judai had ever had to do. It didn't help that Shou broke down every few hours and Judai had to try desperately to calm him down. Seeing one your best friends so broken was hard. Almost harder than the death itself had been. Almost.

All of their friends showed up to pay their respects to Ryou. It was a lot more interesting than his father's funeral had been, to say the least.

"Augh. You haven't aged a day! You asshole." Judai wasn't surprised by the irritated greeting from Manjoume, and he laughed quietly in time with Johan, who was standing beside the dark-haired man and patting his shoulder lightly.

"Calm down, Jun, it's not his fault he's been aging so well." Johan smiled at Judai, and Judai smiled easily back, despite the pang of jealousy that shot through him.

Johan and Manjoume had gotten really close some time after graduation. Now they lived together on and off, in some sort of strange half-relationship. It had taken years for Judai to actually realize that he was jealous. To this day, he wasn't sure which one he was jealous of. Probably both. But that's what you got when you took too long to understand your feelings for someone – or multiple someones. It was part of the reason he still forced himself to travel so much.

When Manjoume was dragged into a conversation with Asuka (he actually went fairly willingly), Johan threw his arm around Judai's shoulders, giving him a side hug. "Really, though, how do you keep yourself looking so young?" he asked curiously.

Judai just laughed and shoved his friend playfully. "I dunno. How do you manage to look so old?" he retorted with a grin.

It was so nice being around everyone again. That was the only good part about the whole dreary event. Despite that, Judai's eyes kept being drawn to Shou, sitting alone in a corner, flipping through books of old pictures of his brother.

Judai knew it would take time for Shou to heal from this. All the same, he spent as much time around him as he possibly could. He even stuck around after the funeral for nearly a month. But then the wanderlust caught him again and he was off without a word. Sometimes, he wondered if it hurt his friends that he left without telling them, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Saying good-bye was too hard, even for a little while.

**Jun Manjoume**

Through the next few years, it became more evident to even Judai himself how little he was aging. It wasn't what mattered to him most, though, so he paid it as little mind as he could manage. Every so often, it would crop to the forefront of his thoughts, but most of the time it was pushed to the back by a much more important matter.

In the years following the Kaiser's death, Judai began to slow down, losing his drive to travel more and more with each passing trip. Eventually, he found himself staying with Manjoume and Johan more and more often. They welcomed him – a little angrily on Manjoume's part – and when he finally found the courage and ability to tell them how he felt, they were accepting.

It was an odd sort of relationship that they formed, but Judai loved every minute of it. Whenever he felt the growing need to leave, he could take off for a while, but they were always willing to welcome him back with open arms. He grew so attached to both of them that he couldn't imagine why he hadn't confessed to either of them earlier.

That's why, when Judai suddenly found himself in the position of losing someone he loved for the first time, he reacted a lot more harshly than he had with Ryou.

Neither Judai nor Johan had known that Manjoume was sick. At least, not as sick as he turned out to be. They heard him coughing and he complained frequently of being in pain. On top of that, he progressively looked thinner and paler each passing day. They pestered him to go to the doctor and he always said that he would, just give him a little time to get to it, geez.

Manjoume had never been very good at taking care of himself, though. When Johan finally realized how bad it was and forced the man into the hospital, there wasn't much they could do but put him on a lot of medicine and hope.

Honestly, Judai hadn't known that people could still die from pneumonia.

Sitting beside the hospital bed, Judai watched Manjoume breathing raggedly. Johan had a hold of one of the dark-haired man's hands and was muttering to him continuously, telling him to push through. A strange sense of foreboding had descended on Judai as he watched the scene. And as much as he wanted to reach out and reassure Johan, or grab Manjoume's hand and try and tug him back from the brink of death, he couldn't.

He knew this was a fight he couldn't win. It was eating at him already. "Why didn't you listen to us?" It was the only thing he could force past his lips as he let his head fall forward in defeat. It was a sensation he wasn't even remotely used to.

Johan looked up at him sharply at that, as if to say 'don't you dare give up'.

Manjoume's breath was more ragged now and Judai could feel his own chest restricting with each passing moment, every time he heard Manjoume exhale, waiting the eternity of a few seconds to see if he would breathe in again. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore and he stood up, heading towards the door.

"Where are you going?" Johan's voice was soft, but it stopped Judai in the doorway. He couldn't bring himself to turn and look at the other man.

It took him a few moments to formulate what to say. "I'm just stepping out." He paused. "If he wakes up, tell him…" He swallowed hard, trying to will the lump in his throat away.

He'd never been able to fully say the words he'd always wanted to say to Manjoume. This seemed like a really important time to do it, but he was still having trouble making the words come out. After standing there for a good half a minute, he finally hit the doorframe with his fist and spoke again.

"Tell him I love him."

Without waiting for a response, he gritted his teeth and stormed out of the room, out of the hospital, and out of the city as quickly as he could. He didn't look back, and he didn't even think of going back. Johan called him over and over, but Judai didn't answer his phone. The voicemail telling him that Manjoume had passed, the dates of his funeral – even that was almost too much for Judai to handle hearing. So he deleted it. He didn't want to go to this funeral. He couldn't.

It was months before Judai stopped crying himself to sleep.

Years before he came into contact with any of his friends again.

**Interlude**

"Yubel?"

Judai had managed to hop a train traveling across Canada. It was late, though, and nobody else seemed to be on board. At least, nobody that was alert or even really awake. He was staring out the window, hand cupped around his chin as he watched the dark landscape zip by at rapid speeds.

Despite the fact that he didn't really need to speak aloud in order to talk to Yubel, he liked to sometimes. It was a normal sort of contact and it made him feel more secure in his own sanity. He'd come to question that more and more with each passing year.

"What is it, Judai?" Yubel appeared before his eyes, sitting in the seat next to him and looking both amused and concerned at the same time. It was astounding how she could manage so many emotions at once.

Obviously, she already knew what he wanted to ask. And, innately, Judai already knew the answer to his own question. But he had to put it out in the open anyway. "I'm not aging, am I?"

It wasn't the best way to phrase the question, but it was all he could force himself to begin with. "Technically, you are," she replied after a moment, a hint of a smirk on her face. "Just very slowly."

"Then… I'm going to outlive everyone, aren't I?"

"It's very likely."

Judai took a deep breath and let it out heavily, steaming up the window in front of his face. "So I'm just going to have to watch all of them die." It had been years since he spoke to anyone. In that time, he'd heard of his mother's death, as well as a few more of his friends – Jim had been attacked by a vicious animal on an expedition, O'Brien had been killed in action, Ed had a parachute malfunction – but he had been unwilling to attend their funerals or make any contact with them. It hurt too much to realize that they were gone and there was nothing he could do to bring them back.

"So it's better if I just stay away," he finally concluded aloud, reaching up to wipe the steam away. "It will make everything easier in the end."

There was silence in the car for a few long moments. A man on the other end of the car snored loudly and shifted in his sleep. Yubel watched Judai closely. "I think you're wrong," she said quietly. "It's hurting you more now than it did when you left." He was shaking, but he refused to look at her yet. "You should go back to them. Before you lose more of them and regret it even further."

"I can't stay away, but I can't watch them die!" Judai turned to her, his eyes bright with tears, and his face screwed up into a scowl. "So what am I supposed to do?" he asked, almost desperately.

Reaching out, Yubel caressed his cheek softly. "Deal with it." Her tone was firm. "Death is a part of life. It doesn't mean they're gone. They'll always be here. Just like I'm always here." As much as she hated to share Judai, she had realized a long time ago that Judai needed people in his life. A lot of them.

Judai just stared at her for a moment. And then he broke down in her arms. It was rare that Yubel saw Judai cry – and she saw it more than anyone else – but it broke her heart every time.

At Yubel's insistence, Judai began to make contact with his friends again. They were all both very relieved to hear from him and very angry at him for running away for so long. It had been about six years since Manjoume had died and all of his friends were nearing their sixtieth birthdays. It was strange to see them all looking so much older, while he himself barely looked like he had broached twenty years. But it was all the same as it had once been.

They passed from his life peacefully now – Asuka, Kenzan, Fubuki – and Judai had to learn to get along without them no matter how much it hurt.

The rekindling of his ties with Johan was the hardest. Johan both did and did not forgive him for running away, and Judai could understand that. Neither of them could live without the other, though. Not while they were both still alive.

After three years together, they wound up married. It was something that Johan had always wanted, so Judai had finally agreed to stop roaming so much and stay with him. It was honestly one of the happiest times in Judai's life.

But… no matter how many times he begged Johan to tell him, he would never reveal whether he had been able to give Manjoume Judai's last message.

He supposed he deserved that much punishment at least.

**Johan Andersen**

Even though it often made Judai feel a little awkward, Johan had a tendency to talk to him frequently about death. It was always followed by a quip, often light-hearted, but it still put Judai in a foul mood to begin with. However, Johan seemed determined to make Judai come to terms with the fact that people would die, and that was all right. As time went by, Judai began to feel less and less awkward about the topic of conversation and actually managed to have deep, philosophical discussions about it with Johan.

It seemed like a quiet way of preparing Judai for Johan's death. When Judai came to this realization, he pointed it out to his husband, who just laughed and winked as if to say 'you've found me out!'

While the idea of losing Johan stung Judai deeply, he began to notice something more – acceptance. Johan was fine with the idea. He knew that one day, he would die, and he was okay with that. Because it meant that he would get to start the next leg of the journey.

The only thing that seemed to concern the man was what would happen to his Crystal Beasts when he was gone.

"You have to promise to take care of them," he would insist on a regular basis. "I know they'll want to stay with me, but I want them to be with someone I trust! Okay?"

Every time, Judai agreed that he would take good care of them and Johan would sigh with relief. As he got older, the insistence grew more and more intense and he seemed to start forgetting that he had already gotten Judai's promise dozens of times over. Judai didn't mind. If it reassured Johan, he would do it as many times as he needed to.

He decided not to make the same mistake with Johan that he'd made with Manjoume and made a point of telling him every day how much he loved him. Johan was both amused and pleased by the vehemence with which Judai would state his love and he would always return the words with equal enthusiasm.

Johan's sleep patterns grew more and more fitful as he came closer to the end. It was always a relief when the man slept through the night peacefully.

One morning came when Johan didn't wake up.

He was smiling softly as Judai shook him. His skin was cold and he didn't answer. Judai wept silently as he made the necessary phone calls. It was going to be okay, he told himself over and over again. Johan knew this was coming. He was ready for it.

That didn't make it hurt any less. But it made it bearable at least.

For the first time in decades, Judai attended a funeral. It was a small gathering, but it was nice – full of smiles and fond memories more than sorrow and regret. Still, Judai breathed a sigh of relief when it was over. He gathered up his new companions, bid farewell to Johan, and headed out once more into the world.

**Shou Marufuji**

Despite the fact that he wasn't physically aging, Judai had started to notice how differently he acted in situations that he was familiar with. He realized that he had matured despite everything and that he really didn't feel the need to be constantly moving anymore. Perhaps it was because he had been travelling frequently for over sixty years. He couldn't be sure.

Either way, as he began to slow down once again, he found himself drawn to the last close friend he had in the world – Shou. The man had done well for himself, despite never fully getting over the loss of his brother, and he had made it to a ripe, old age. He was happy when Judai came to pay him a visit, commenting lightheartedly about how he shouldn't be calling Judai 'aniki' anymore when he obviously looked so much younger than him.

Judai took the jokes with a smile. It was nice to be with Shou again, now that he finally realized just how much the blue-haired man had always meant to him. Shou was the first person to really be there for Judai, in much the same way that Judai was the first person to really be there for Shou. They had a mutual bond that nothing – not even many years apart – could break.

Shou was old now – almost eighty years old, he boasted – and he'd been living in a home for assisted living. Judai moved himself into an apartment nearby and came to visit daily. The people who tended to Shou were convinced that Judai was his son. Why else would he come to visit every day? Shou just laughed and agreed with them. It was much easier than explaining that they'd been friends most of their lives.

Even though Shou had a real family who visited him frequently, Judai managed to be the first one to know about his death. He had stopped by like he did every day and the staff informed him immediately. It had happened early in the morning. Nothing anyone could do. It was just his time.

As they told him, Judai felt a familiar constriction in his chest and throat. It had been almost ten years since the last time he'd felt it, but he knew it well. This time, though, it was stronger than ever before. Forcing himself to swallow back his tears, he made his way to Shou's room. There was his best friend, lying on his bed, looking like he was asleep. Judai knew better, but he still thought he could see Shou's chest rising and falling with breath. A trick of the eyes. Shou was gone.

He stood there for a long minute, silently staring at his friend – the last friend he had had in the whole world. And as that thought struck him, he moved forward slowly, as if in a dream, and knelt beside Shou's bed, taking the lifeless hand in his own.

For the first time that he could remember, he sobbed openly. He didn't care that the staff looked in on him and tried to comfort him. He didn't even stop crying when they pulled him away from the body and took him to a private room. The tears wouldn't stop. They couldn't stop. He had finally lost everything.

What was he supposed to do now?

**Conclusion**

Somehow, through some miracle, Takuma Saiou had managed to live to reach a hundred years in age. It had actually taken a long time and a lot of searching for Judai to find him again. He had taken to hunting down any shred of any connections he had once had after Shou's death. That was how he finally found himself sitting next to Saiou, who listened to his life's story silently and calmly.

It took days. And they spent days afterward talking about it. Judai felt like he would never be able to cry again by the end of it. His eyes had been wrung dry.

During this time, though, Judai began to realize just how much the world had changed without his noticing. Sure, he had been travelling almost non-stop, but he had never really paused to take stock of what was going on in the world around him. Talking with Saiou had a calming effect. It was shocking and interesting to realize just how long he had lived and how much he had seen. How much he had lost.

"Well," Saiou said one day, after nearly a week of talking things over. "It seems to me that you're going to live forever."

Judai winced. That was the last thing he wanted. "Yeah. Seems that way." He frowned and fidgeted a little in his seat.

Saiou reached out and grasped his hand. It was a frail hold, but solid. Judai gripped back tightly. "Don't worry, Judai. You have a bright future ahead of you. Think of all the good you can do. And you know you're never alone."

Glancing off to the side, Judai knew that Saiou was right. He wasn't alone. Yubel was with him. Always. And she was the only reason he felt like he hadn't completely gone insane yet. She was always there, comforting him when things were roughest. He appreciated her immensely! It was just…

"I don't want… to lose anyone else." The words were soft. He let his breath out slowly after speaking. It was hard to admit just how terrified he was.

"That's too bad then, isn't it?" Saiou smirked a little and tightened his grip on Judai's hand as much as he could. "But let me give you some advice."

Judai looked back at Saiou expectantly. He could really use some good advice right now.

"Find something to hope for. Find it and cling to it. You have to hope for something, Judai, or you won't make it. Stave off insanity. Realize that there's something good that can come of this. Just find that one thing, and you'll be fine."

It was strange advice and Judai wasn't sure how to take it. He tried to ask Saiou to expand on it, but the older man refused. In fact, he insisted that Judai leave as soon as possible after that. "Go back to your travels," he told him. "Help the people you can."

That was advice that Judai could take easily. He was used to travelling and it came to him naturally once again. But he continued to mull over Saiou's initial advice for months afterward, even after news of the man's death finally reached him.

One day, it came to him.

"Yusei." He stared at the empty space before him as the thought struck him out of nowhere. It had been so long since he had gone back in time with the riding duelist to save the world. It almost seemed like a dream now. But he knew…

If he was being forced to live forever, this would give him the opportunity to make good on his promise to one day see Yusei again. A small smile tugged at his lips as he thought about it.

Something to hope for.

It was that hope that drove him into the future. He may lose everything over and over again, but as long as he forced himself to hope and realize the good that he could do…

…he would never really lose everything.

**END**


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